New Shoot

These are a selection of photographs from my second studio shoot. I used a largeformat camera with the H20 digital back, this is because the greeting cards I have been looking at are all square cropped. This time I focused the shoot around flowers. I had found an article in March's issue of Digital SLR which showed a way of using a black box to capture a single flower, I tried this out and felt it was very successful. These are the photographs I got from using this technique. The two with coloured background were originally black backgrounds which  changed in photoshop as an experiment.

Next time I am in the studio I will try using this technique but use gels to give different colour backgrounds. I am also going to use soft boxes instead of standard heads with a honeycomb attachment as I think the shadows are a bit harsh in these images.

I also photographed a bunch of flowers using the largeformat camera. I used quite a close up angle with a shallow depth of field to experiment with focusing on different flowers. Here are some of the photographs;

Overall I am with how this project is going so far but thinks there is still a way to go. I feel the individual flowers are my best work so far and want to explore that idea further. I think the bunch of flowers works well but I don't think that I have captured the best lighting and angle.  

New Studio Shoot

Yesterday was my second studio shoot, this time I experimented with lighting flowers. In the March issue of Digital SLR there is an interesting technique used for lighting flowers which I had a go at in the studio. I am currently post processing the photographs and then I will upload them.

Studio practise

This is a selection from my first studio shoot. I used a Canon 40D with a 50mm lens, I plan to use a large format camera with a digital back next time, as this was purely an experiment with the lighting. The 50mm lens gave me more control over the final photograph, I orignally shot some in colour and some in monochrome. I later changed a couple of the coloured images to black and white using photoshop.

 I think the coloured background has created the best results from this shoot. Trying to recreate Weston's work was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be, catch lights from the softboxes I was using have created burnt out sections on the peppers. I am going to attempt this again and try and find odd shaped peppers next time to add to the abstract feel.

Research and first shoot!

This week I have been researching photography of still life and organic forms, Edward Weston's peppers have inspired me. I like how abstract the peppers look. I want to try and recreate similar lighting to that used by Weston. I am also going to try and recreate one of Steve Chong's photographs.

Proposal

Proposal – Specialist Studio

For this project I plan to create a number of Still Life photographs that could be used for greeting cards. This is a subject that I have briefly looked at before and would like to further my knowledge of the subject. I have decided on a number of objects that I could be used for the photographs, from my research into still life photography I have found that these objects are used quite frequently. Some of the objects that I plan to use are; fruit, vegetables, flowers, plants, plant pots and crockery. 

To start this project I have researched photographers that specialise in still life photography, I have also looked at greeting cards that are available that contain still life photography. From this research I am going to start experimenting in the studio with some of the objects listed above and try to recreate some of the photographs I have found. By doing this I feel I will gain further knowledge of studio lighting techniques, it will also give me inspiration for the types of lighting and sets I could use. From the experimentation I will plan my final ideas as I will then know what will work well and what I want the final images to look like.

From the research I have conducted I can see that the main elements to consider with still life photography are the subject, lighting, colour and texture. These four elements are what make a still life interesting and appealing to the viewer. To make sure I consider these when planning my final ideas I will create mood boards and sketches before entering the studio.

For presentation I will print 3 prints off of my final images as well as create the greetings cards to put the photographs into context. I also feel it would be good for me to find out about how to make greeting cards as this could be a job possibility for the future.

Specialist Studio Project

I have created this blog to show the development of my Specialist Studio Project!!